


Joints of Interest

by hyfr



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, High School, STONER ROOT, The Moon - Freeform, and the gang is there for a bit, apathetic "lets get out of this small town" high school seniors, drugz, f/f - Freeform, ford truck lesbian shaw, i love stoner root, kind of silly, light humor, lol, root/shaw - Freeform, sameen shaw is one of the greatest television characters ever created mfs!, shaw loves her too and wants to Protect her, water tower cliche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 01:40:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10322615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyfr/pseuds/hyfr
Summary: Shaw sighed. It was true, the saying “Ain’t no rest for the wicked." Root never fucking slacked in her consistent pursuit of Shaw’s ire. Shaw took a long, long sip until the bottle was finished and settled into the warmness of the alcohol, the cool sand beneath her legs, and the girl thrumming with energy and slick grins beside her.





	

"I don't want to do jack fucking shit," Root professes loudly. She squints her eyes at the joint in her fingers and twists off the end.

Shaw sighs, leans further back into the couch. She adjusts her ass on the pillowy cushion and curses the shitty couch for attempting to swallow her whole.

"I was just asking, Root. We've been sitting in here for an hour.”

Shaw gestures around the shack they’re sitting in. There’s a faded ‘90s Hercules and Xena poster hanging on one wall and not much else, besides two scruffy couches pulled next to each other in the middle of the floor, and Shaw sniffs in disgust at the shitload of spiders and discarded beer bottles hiding in the corners. But it is quiet, and peaceful, hidden away in the middle of the town woods, and it is one of Root’s favorite smoke up pads. Shaw sighs. Root strikes her lighter, and for a moment her white skin is saturated with a burning orange hue. 

“We could.. go to the lake again?"

At this suggestion, Root turns to meet Shaw’s expectant gaze. She lets a dark grin slide over her features, and purposefully looks Shaw up and down, which immediately triggers a scoff and eye roll. She puts the joint aside, pockets the lighter, then leans forward, eyes Shaw like a predator. Shaw doesn't break eye contact, and Root's grin turns dreamy for a second.

"Do you remember our last trip to the lake, Sameen?"

 

* * *

 

They had gone to the lake a week prior. It was only the third or fourth time they'd hung out outside of school after months of pestering each other in classes and John working to convince Shaw to "just try" hanging out with Root and Fusco, the two most clownish stoners in the school.

They had sat pressed against each other in the back of John's truck next to Carter, after Shaw lost Shotgun to Fusco and ended up in the middle of the backseat. Carter made sure to shrink away from her simmering disgust but Root took full advantage of the confined space. Shaw remembers the reflection of a red street light glowing in Root's black eyes, and the heat of Root's mouth inches from her neck when she leaned closer on a sharp turn.

When John stopped the car at the spot and Root remained far too up in her space, Shaw shouldered her off with a huff before hopping out of the car and snatching a beer from Fusco.

"Hey, don't be sore," he snapped. She scrunched her nose at him and turned to walk down to the edge of the water, away from the group, to gaze across the black expanse of water and the crescent moon hanging low in the night sky. She could still hear Root's bubbly laughter carrying down to her from the forest edge, and she gritted her teeth, leaned her head all the way back to stare up into space. 

It killed Shaw, but she did like Root. Of course she did. Root just got her better, somehow, than Carter, and Zoe, and even John, and their mutual burning hatred of the monotony and blandness of the high school scene had driven them together like nothing else. She ground her teeth together and twisted open the beer. The sound of the group's laughter and eventually the smell of weed drifted down to Shaw.

"Hey Shaw, want a puff?" John called.

"No," she called back.

"More for me," she heard Root say cheekily, and she sighed up to the sky, inwardly cursing herself, Root, and John, but only half-heartedly.

 

Later, after the moon had disappeared under the trees and Shaw was working through her third beer, Fusco and John rose from where the group lounged on the beach to go relieve themselves somewhere in the woods.

"Gross," Shaw muttered over her bottle. Root grinned sideways at her, then quickly swiped her finger across Shaw's chin to collect a drop of beer. When Shaw turned with a scowl to glare at her, Root licked the finger and winked.

Carter shot Shaw a Look and chuckled.

"I'm gonna go grab another beer from the car," Carter said as she stood slowly. "You guys want more?"

Root turned to Shaw and batted her eyes.

"Yes," Shaw said loudly, shooting Root a purposefully indignant glare, and Root laughed. Carter grinned and shook her head, then turned to walk back to the truck.

Root hummed loudly, and turned herself to face Shaw completely with her signature feline grin. Shaw sighed. It was true, the saying, “Ain’t no rest for the wicked.” Root never fucking slacked in her consistent pursuit of Shaw’s ire. She took a long, long sip until the bottle was finished and settled into the warmness of the alcohol, the cool sand beneath her legs, and the girl thrumming with energy and slick grins beside her.

"Well, Shaw,” Root said, flashing her teeth, “looks like we're all alone here."

Shaw felt a tug at her lips. Despite herself, she leaned ever so slightly towards Root, whose grin only grew hungrier. She saw the challenge in Root’s dark eyes. Always pushing that boundary. Shaw smirked.

"It certainly does," Shaw replied, letting her voice lilt only because she was contentedly tipsy and curious to see where Root took this little game they played. Root leaned in further, and Shaw pretended to ignore seeing Root's gaze shift down to her lips out of her peripheral vision.

"And are we just going to sit here?" Root asked, pursing her lips in a show of mock innocence, lacing syrup and sex into each word she spoke, and finally moved close enough into Shaw to graze their legs together. Shaw didn't flinch. She only tilted her head to meet Root's gaze head on.

"Are you this annoying with all the people you flirt with, or is it just me?" 

Root's mask of innocence cracked open and she broke into a wide grin. 

"Oh Sam, you know you're my only exception."

Shaw smirked wider when Root shamelessly dropped her gaze down to her lips, and when Shaw opened them and leaned forward just slightly, Root's eyes snapped up.

It was dark and neither girl could see each other completely but yet they still felt the indescribable pull of desire that bound them together, always, always bending Shaw's unbendable will and giving Root the confidence to press, prod, flirt and cajole, all building and building into an electric chokehold of lust that, in that moment, overwhelmed them both. Just as they each shot forward to finally consummate their matching desires with a kiss, Carter called from the truck and the boys clicked on flashlights that lit up the beach and Shaw flung herself back out of Root's space. 

Carter laughed loudly from the truck and Shaw groaned, grabbed her beer from its place in the sand a second before she remembered it was empty. Root just pouted.

On the ride back hours later, Root looked out the window away from Shaw. She didn't bother pushing into the other girl's personal space until John pulled up to her street and she placed a hand on Shaw's hip and leaned into her neck to whisper a quiet "Goodnight, Sameen" before slipping out into the night, and Shaw let her.

On Monday at school it was back to overt come-ons versus hostile defensiveness as usual, but an undercurrent of tension continued to build.

 

* * *

 

"I remember," Shaw answers. Root smiles. Their eyes stay locked and the pull between them grows sharper.

"If we’re going, we could invite John," Root says. "Or Carter, or Zoe."

Shaw remains impartial. Root pushes, “Even Finch, if we can get him out of his Batcave for an hour.”

Shaw shrugs. Root lets her sly grin envelop her body and practically slithers up close to Shaw, her voice dropping into dangerously sultry territory. “But I don’t think you want that, Shaw.”

Shaw raises an eyebrow, and Root pushes further.

“I think you want me all to yourself.”

Root’s eyes are burning into her and Shaw grits her teeth.

“Were you going to kiss me, Shaw? On the beach?” Root’s voice turns teasing, as if she’s mocking a child, and she pouts her lips in a way she knows will make Shaw crazy. Shaw grunts in frustration. Root just narrows her gaze and clinks her teeth together in that infuriating catty grin. Shaw jolts forward to grab a fistful of Root's shirt and pulls hard.

"Come here, you little-"

The insult is lost in the kiss. They collide forcefully, Root falling on top of Shaw on the couch, and her shirt is ripped from where Shaw's hand remains gripping the fabric. Shaw kisses her hard, and Root breathes a moan into Shaw's mouth when Shaw abandons the neckline of her shirt to grab her ass and pull her in closer. 

"Fuck," Root whines when Shaw licks down her neck, and she bucks her hips and moans when Shaw bites hard on her shoulder. She winds a hand behind Shaw's neck to bring their lips back together and grinds her hips into Shaw's when she fists a hand in her hair and pulls her head back, biting down her neck to her chest. Root moans and Shaw chuckles darkly. Root was just as receptive as she’d imagined her to be.

“Does it make you wet when I rough you around like this?” she asks, her voice low in Root’s ear.

“Y-yes,” Root chokes, sinking her nails into the back of Shaw’s neck. She feels Shaw’s grin against her skin, and they are both gasping for air when Shaw shoves Root down and pulls at her too-tight jeans. The couch, it turns out, doesn’t end up being so uncomfortable after all.

 

 

Shaw has a car of her own. They leave the shack behind when Root first regains the ability to stand, and then after Shaw bats away Root’s insistent hands tugging at her pants with a grumble. Root pouts when Shaw resorts to totally shoving her off, and her childish frown looks as non-theatrical as Shaw’s ever seen it. She sighs. 

“I’m on my period,” she says, to explain her hesitation, shrugging her shoulders a bit. Root's eyebrows shoot up and she brightens immediately: “Oh!” 

Shaw can’t bite back a laugh, then stiffens when Root leans into her neck to kiss and whisper a game plan for roughly 4-7 days in the future.

 

 

Out of the shack, the walk is long, just under a mile to the nearest parking lot, where Shaw has invited Root to go for a drive. They walk in silence and Root returns to her joint, inhales long and deep, releases the smoke all at once like she’s breathing out a tornado. 

This is another thing Shaw likes about Root: the vibe of her presence, never filling their space with unneeded dialogues or forced attempts at conversations. They walk through the woods together and Shaw turns her head once to look at Root against the green tangles of forest brush, smoke pouring from her nostrils with the lit joint clamped firmly between her lips. 

There’s a large purple mark peeking out over the neckline of her ripped shirt. She listens to the clomp-clomp of Root’s lazy stride over the forest path and the rustling of the trees around them, and smiles.

 

 

Shaw drives them to the closest ice cream spot and devours her large banana split sundae in the time it takes Root to polish off a small vanilla. She sees the way Root stares at her lips intensely while she eats and, of course, pretends not to notice. After she polishes off the last clump of hot fudge at the bottom of her bowl, she sweeps their empty cups from the table and tosses them, then fixes Root with a grin.

“Want to go somewhere cool?”

 

 

They drive and Root can’t stop smiling at the way Shaw grips the steering wheel tightly in complete focus with a tightly set jaw. Shaw smirks when she catches Root staring with wonder, and reaches over to flick her thigh at a red light.

Eventually she stops the car at the end of a little dirt road. They hop out, and Root sidles up to Shaw with an expectant grin, who meets her sparkling eyes with another smirk. Shaw jerks her head up the path towards a clearing beyond the surrounding trees, and follows behind Root with a hand resting lightly on her back. 

They approach a tall fence topped with barbed wire, and Shaw trots over to a bushy shrub sprouting on either side of the fence and pulls back a couple branches to reveal a small hole in the fence running along the ground.

Shaw ducks and rolls easily under, wiggles her eyebrows at Root from the other side. Root sighs lazily. She stretches herself along the fence, reaching up to hook her fingers around the wire, stares down at Shaw, who meets her eyes with a dark grin and draws in closer to press against her as much as she can with the fence separating them. Root tilts her head.

“Sweetie,” Root accentuates the word with a bat of her eyelids and a roll of her hips against the fence, “your cute little body might be able to fit through there, but I’m not sure if I can.” 

Shaw rolls her eyes and pulls back from Root’s magnetic heat. 

“You’re not  _ that _ tall.”

Root shrugs, kneels, leans back onto the ground, presses her arms to her chest, and rolls, with a loud “Fuck”,  like a roly-poly under the fence. Shaw laughs. Huffing, Root stands and dusts herself off, and meets Shaw’s bright eyes, and her flashing teeth. 

Shaw’s eyes are so bright, so full, and as Root stares at her smile she is filled with the crushing weight of an adoration that threatens to break her heart right in two, right there in the middle of a forest. Shaw reaches out to curl a hand into her jean pockets and pulls her up a trail away from the fence, and they walk pressed side by side until the city water tower comes into view over the crest of a hill, a hill cast in golden light from a setting sun.

Shaw hops up to the tower ladder, reaches down a hand to Root, and helps the other girl with her gangly limbs up the ladder before she goes up herself. Against the large tower, they sit, and Root whips out another joint. Shaw watches Root beside her and the sun, slipping down the sky, and snakes her arm around Root’s hip just as the last point of the sun disappears under the horizon.

 

Darkness falls shortly, and they sit in silence as daylight shrinks away into darkness, both surveying the spread of land visible from the tower perch. Root takes a long pull of the joint and her neck bobs when she leans back to blow it out over her head. Shaw watches the sinews and skin of her neck slide. The smoke around them lingers.

“There’s a lot of nothing out there,” Root says. 

Her eyes are glazed, set unfocused on some far away point on the horizon, past stretches of glittering town lights. The orange tip of her joint glows from where she holds it in between two fingers, and Shaw watches the smoke twirl up and around her arm into the dark of the impending night. 

Struck by an unknown impulse, she reaches out to curl her hand around Root’s neck to turn her away from the horizon. She meets Root’s eyes, watches them come into focus onto hers, watches the progression of an affectionate smile light her eyes, and leans up to kiss her. It’s soft at first, until they part just inches from each other and Shaw tilts her head up again to meet Root’s peculiar gaze, and then Root reaches behind her back to press them together and she licks down Shaw’s neck, biting hard at the juncture of her shoulder. Shaw releases a quick breath and huffs a laugh, shoves Root back and kisses her again, reveling in the danger of Root’s smokey lips against her own on the precarious water tower perch. 

After a minute of furious kissing Root pushes Shaw off with a gasp and breathes out: “Your car.” 

Shaw nods, breathless and pulsing with energy. 

“Watch your step,” she says as Root lowers a foot onto the ladder. Root just rolls her eyes, clamps her joint in between her lips, and starts picking her way down the ladder. Shaw thinks she looks like a gangly spider with only four legs, making the slow crawl back down the ladder. Shaw slides down the ladder herself easily with her natural grace and athleticism and with just enough performative flair to be considered show-offish but she doesn’t pay much mind to why she felt the need, only to Root’s familiar hungry shark gaze that she can make out in the near darkness back on solid land.

 

They end up a sweaty, tangled mess in the backseat of Shaw’s car, Root’s hands struggling to find a grip on the window and seats as Shaw peels off her jeans for the second time that day and devours her mercilessly.

After Shaw’s had her fill, they just kiss, kisses laden with bites and gasps and the bitter smoky aftertaste of weed. Eventually Shaw crawls back up to the driver’s seat to switch on the radio and Root returns to the passenger side. 

She reaches over to turn up the radio by a couple notches, earning a grumble from Shaw who has started the car back down the hill path. It’s a slow ride, and Shaw grits her teeth at the bumpiness of the road and the sharp darkness her headlights cut through and at Root, staring at her openly with great fondness. 

Shaw says over the radio: “If you want to smoke, you can out the window.”

Root grins and gives her a thumbs up, then pulls out a cigarette, and Shaw can’t help but make a noise of surprise.

“Root, you smoke  _ cigarettes?”  _ She spits the word out like it’s utter filth.

Root laughs.

“God no. These are herbal cigarettes,” she says. “No nicotine or tobacco. That stuff’s bad for you.”

Shaw balks.

“And weed isn’t?”

Root shrugs, lets a lazy smile settle over her features, places the cigarette in between her lips and winks lewdly  when Shaw turns from the road to look at her. She lights it a moment later and leans out the window to breathe out, keeping her arm extended out the window to let the smoke breeze away with the wind.

 

 

Shaw wants to watch the moon rise as the sky gets darker, and pulls into an empty parking lot just outside of town. She grabs blankets from under a seat and tosses one to Root, then climbs up in the back of her truck, watches Root scramble up after her, her long legs folding over each other primly after she makes it up. 

They sit, shoulders bumping and legs pressed together under the blankets. The night, and the sky, are quiet.

Root reaches into her pocket for an almost-finished joint and a lighter, produces them again with a flourish and leer at Shaw, who huffs in amusement. Root reaches down to grope at Shaw’s upper thigh as they stare up at the night sky.

"It's nice," Root ventures after a few moments, easing the edge out of her smile. "Hanging out like this."

Shaw doesn’t respond, just studies Root’s open gaze, watches her finish the joint off in one long pull. Another appears in her hand almost immediately and Shaw’s lips twitch as Root leans in close to her and holds out the joint towards her mouth. She doesn’t look away from Root’s hungry eyes as she leans in further to place it in between Shaw’s open lips.

“Need a light, Sameen?” Root says in a low voice. Shaw narrows her eyes, her lips pressed around the joint, and keeps them on Root, tilting her head up when Root strikes the lighter. Root’s eyes burn, like the flame, and her lips are devoid of their usual sneering curl. Shaw shifts her gaze to Root’s gaunt, sharp cheekbones, her pale skin, her eyes, dark with dangerous intrigue and so open to her. 

Shaw thinks of the water tower, and Root’s dark eyes searching the expanse of the horizon, and her chapped red lips blowing smoke into the night. Shaw thinks Root needs Something. Shaw thinks Root needs, deserves, and must have much more than whatever it is she’s getting from life right now.

She reaches out impulsively to graze her fingertips along Root’s cheek.

“Root,” she says. Root freezes at Shaw’s touch, relaxes only after a moment when Shaw doesn't pull away, but seems hesitant to turn into Shaw’s hand or to look at the other girl.

“Root,” she says again, and curls her fingers under her chin and leans forward to kiss the side of Root’s lower lip, their mouths just barely grazing. Root sighs into Shaw’s touch and turns to meet her lips. The kiss is soft and wet.

Shaw keeps her close, lets Root lay down half curled over her to finish off the joint with her head resting on Shaw’s lap, the lazy smoke curling around their still forms and up to the moon in the sky. She pulls a blanket tighter around them, makes sure to cover that crazy girl’s long ass legs so she doesn’t shiver from the chill of night.

Shaw will keep her close.

**Author's Note:**

> IDK! This is BASICALLY just a LATE night stream of consciousness typed out after feeling so much about SHOOT that i just neeeded to write. and its in a weird-ass tense I didn’t even realize was happening until I proofread it. lmao! And it has a weird ass plot that doesnt make a Lick of sense. Enjoy Lol! Anyway, I will LITERALLY never be over Root and Shaw, i love them so GD much, and this is just me combining my love for teenage romance antics with the OTP and shaw’s a twinge OOC but like ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ peace and love


End file.
